course of discipline and abstinence, to which I
was condemned, invigorated the constitution of my mind and body; poverty
and pride estranged me from my countrymen. One mischief, however, and
in their eyes a serious and irreparable mischief, was derived from the
success of my Swiss education; I had ceased to be an Englishman. At
the flexible period of youth, from the age of sixteen to twenty-one, my
opinions, habits, and sentiments were cast in a foreign mould; the faint
and distant remembrance of England was almost obliterated; my native
language was grown less familiar; and I should have cheerfully accepted
the offer of a moderate independence on the terms of perpetual exile.
By the good sense and temper of Pavilliard my yoke was insensibly
lightened: he left me master of my time and actions; but he could
neither change my situation, nor increase my allowance, and with the
progress of my years and reason I impatiently sighed for the moment of
my deliverance. At length, in the spring of the year 1758, my father
signified his permission and his pleasure that I should immediately
return home. We were then in the midst of a war: the resentment of the
French at our taking their ships without a declaration, had rendered
that polite nation somewhat peevish and difficult. They denied a passage
to English travellers, and the road through Germany was circuitous,
toilsome, and perhaps in the neighbourhood of the armies, exposed to
some danger. In this perplexity, two Swiss officers of my acquaintance
in the Dutch service, who were returning to their garrisons, offered
to conduct me through France as one of their companions; nor did we
sufficiently reflect that my borrowed name and regimentals might have
been considered, in case of a discovery, in a very serious light. I took
my leave of Lausanne on April 11 1758, with a mixture of joy and regret,
in the firm resolution revisiting, as a man, the persons and places
which had been so dear to my youth. We travelled slowly, but pleasantly,
in a hired coach, over the hills of Franche-compte and the fertile
province of Lorraine, and passed, without accident or inquiry, through
several fortified towns of the French frontier: from thence we entered
the wild Ardennes of the Austrian dutchy of Luxemburg; and after
crossing the Meuse at Liege, we traversed the heaths of Brabant, and
reached, on April 26, our Dutch garrison of Bois le Duc. In our passage
through Nancy, my eye was gratified by t